Creating Marketable Stories ~ Week Six

 Week 6: Pacing

A marketable story unravels slowly but reads quickly. How does that work?

Pacing is the undercurrent that keeps the story moving. There are two levels to look at that determine how your story reads:

The first is general structure.

Good story structure will be a tight succession of scenes that tell an overarching story while not dumping all the backstory at the beginning.

Let’s look at an example to determine where we could improve the pacing:

Scene 1: Susan finally decides to apply for her dream job. She sends out fifteen applications and gets five interviews. The rest of the scene delves into the reasons for why she’s decided to apply for her dream job.

Scene 2: We see her learn from the first interview. The second interview is the offer she’s looking for, and she nails it, getting the offer. But instead, just to be sure, she goes to all five. (After all, we want to show her thoughtfulness as a character.)

Scenes 3-5: We write scenes for every single interview and then at the end, she goes with job offer number 2.

Scene 6: She starts her job.

In the above list of scenes, if we were to write them, the story would begin to drag at scene 3. The reason is because we already know that she’s nailed interview two and we don’t need to see all the other interviews. We’re wading through them, looking for what happens next (greatly slowing the pace). Scenes 3-5 could be simply a sentence: Susan went on to her other interviews, but none of them matched the excitement she had during the second. Three scenes could be 4 or 5 pages of text, and, in this case, those pages could be summed up in a single sentence.

It's also important to take a look at the backstory in scene one. How much of it is actually needed for this particular moment. Only include what has to be written to understand that scene. The rest can be included at another time, and if it doesn’t directly impact the character or plot, it shouldn’t be in there at all.

In order to pace your story well, every single scene should move the plot or character arc forward or give us what we need to understand how the aforementioned are going to move.

The second way to effect pacing is at the line level.

Within each scene, the words you choose to tell the story will determine its pacing.

Let’s look at two examples of this:

Quickening the Pace

Scene: Sarah Miller is interviewing for a job. This job will introduce her to Will, the most handsome and wonderful man on the planet, who happens to be someone from the past.

Sarah came in and smoothed her new business suit before standing next to the chair across from Mr. Thompson. Would this be her new boss? Only he knew that. Her job was to nail the interview questions—that’s all she could do. She’d had other interviews before, and she’d talked a bit too long. There was one where she’d arrived late. It wasn’t her fault—traffic had been terrible. But she’d learned from it and now she was ready.

“I’m Sarah Miller,” she said, holding out her hand and greeting Mr. Thompson the way her father had taught her—firm but not too firm.

Mr. Thompson shook her hand and motioned for her to have a seat. He opened a folder on his desk and she wondered what was in it. Did it have loads of other people who were also applying for the job? People better than her? She wouldn’t think about that now.

She wanted to get this job because it was the first job she’d ever tried to get based on her artistic skill set. She’d never thought she was good enough before. Once when she was twelve, she’d even hidden her artwork, worried others wouldn’t like it. But now, she’d sent Mr. Thompson all her sketches and ideas to see if she’d be a good fit as creative director.

He looked down his glasses at her. “I see you do mostly pencil sketches.”

“Yes.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “I also do watercolors.”

She’d learned how to do watercolors from her grandmother. She’d spent hours with Nan learning the technique. However, it was only one of many different mediums she’d tried over the years.

“Do you have any to show me?”

“Of course,” she said, pulling out her portfolio. Totally prepared, she was on her game.

What has happened in this scene so far? She’s introduced herself and he’s asked for her watercolors. It took 9 paragraphs for this to happen. While drawing out a scene can make it more dramatic, for this particular scene, all we want to know is: Is she getting the job so she can meet Will?

Let’s look at it with the extraneous information cut out and the scene tightened.

Sarah came in and smoothed her new business suit and stood next to the chair across from Mr. Thompson.

“I’m Sarah Miller,” she said, holding out her hand.

Mr. Thompson shook it and motioned for her to have a seat. He opened a folder on his desk before looking down his glasses at her. “I see you do mostly pencil sketches.”

“Yes.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “I also do watercolors.”

“Do you have any to show me?”

“Of course,” she said, pulling out her portfolio. Totally prepared, she was on her game.

In this scenario, we still have the same information but we’re a lot closer to meeting handsome Will!

Slowing Down the Pace

At the line level, pacing can go longer for areas where you want to develop the plot further as well as to add drama. Let’s look at an example when Will walks onto the scene.

“Hey,” a tall drink of water said as he leaned against the doorframe of Sarah’s new office. “I hear you’re the new creative director.”

“Yes.” Sarah nervously unpacked her things, setting a picture frame of her cat on her desk and then thinking better of it.

“I was wondering if you’d like to get lunch. You hungry?”

He looked familiar. Did she know him? Yes, she did. He used to hide at her house when he was a boy. His parents were rotten people.

“Sure,” she said.

Now, let’s look at the same scene but draw out the pacing for dramatic effect and to fill us in on the plot a bit more.

“Hey,” a tall drink of water said as he leaned against the doorframe of Sarah’s new office. “I hear you’re the new creative director.”

When Sarah met his blue eyes, something behind them drew her back to her childhood. “Yes.” She nervously unpacked her things, setting a picture frame of her cat on her desk and then thinking better of it, her mind on those eyes.

She dared not look into them again for fear the memory hidden at the edge of her mind, the one she suddenly realized she didn’t want to surface, would rush back in like a tidal wave. Her heart pounded. Oh, my God. Did he recognize her?

“I was wondering if you’d like to get lunch. You hungry?”

When she met his gaze once more, there it was as plain as day: the pain. He was polished now, educated, clean-shaven with a dashing smile, but in those eyes, she recognized the little boy with dirty, bare feet, the one who had hidden in her house when things at home had gotten too bad. The one she’d left behind.

“Sure,” she said, but she definitely wasn’t.

In this scenario, we’ve drawn out the pacing, yet every word defines the moment—there’s nothing extra.

How is this example of longer pacing different from the first example of longer pacing? Once you can see it, you’re on your way to a well-paced novel.

© Jenny Hale, 2023